Miss Cobb put down her hand-mirror and sniffed.
"Well," she said, "goodness knows I'm no trouble maker, but somebody ought to tell that young man a few things. He's forever looking at the thermometer and opening windows. I declare, if I hadn't brought my woolen tights along I'd have frozen to death at breakfast. Everybody's complaining."
I put that away in my mind to speak about. It was only by nailing the windows shut and putting strips of cotton batting around the cracks that we'd ever been able to keep people there in the winter. I had my first misgiving then. Heaven knows I didn't realize what it was going to be.
Well, by the evening of that day things were going fairly well. Tillie brought out a basket every morning to me at the spring-house, fairly bursting with curiosity, and Mr. Sam got some canned stuff in Finleyville and took it after dark to the shelter-house. But after the second day Mrs. Dicky got tired holding a frying-pan over the fire and I had to carry out at least one hot meal a day.
They got their own breakfast in a chafing-dish, or rather he got it and carried it to her. And she'd sit on the edge of her cot, with her feet on the soap box—the floor was drafty—wrapped in a pink satin negligee with bands of brown fur on it, looking sweet and perfectly happy, and let him feed her boiled egg with a spoon. I took them some books—my Gray's Anatomy, and Jane Eyre and Molly Bawn, by The Duchess, and the newspapers, of course. They were full of talk about the wedding, and the suite the prince was bringing over with him, and every now and then a notice would say that Miss Dorothy Jennings, the bride's young sister, who was still in school and was not coming out until next year, would be her sister's maid of honor. And when they came to that, they would hug each other—or me, if I happened to be close—and act like a pair of children, which they were. Generally it would end up by his asking her if she wasn't sorry she wasn't back at Greenwich studying French conjugations and having a dance without any men on Friday nights, and she would say "Wretch!" and kiss him, and I'd go out and slam the door.
But there was something on Mr. Dick's mind. I hadn't known him for fourteen years for nothing. And the night Mr. Sam and I carried out the canned salmon and corn and tomatoes he walked back with me to the edge of the deer park, Mr. Sam having gone ahead.
"Now," I said, when we were out of ear-shot, "spit it out. I've been expecting it."
"Listen, Minnie," he answered, "is Ju—is Miss Summers still confined to her room?"
"No," I replied coldly. "Ju—Miss Summers was down to-night to dinner."
"Then she's seen Pierce," he said, "and he's told her the whole story and by to-morrow—"